The Vault is gone, Whitehall is on the backfoot, and the assembled magical community of Great Britain is kicking off.

Sounds like a, well, read the title…

Jameson Parker had held out hope that maybe, just maybe, things wouldn’t go off the rails when Whitehall’s magical deterrent, The Vault, was taken out of play. A wee bit naive, there. With Whitehall scrabbling to respond, the mages of Britain threatening to turn on each other, and a vision of a distant apocalypse weighing heavily on his mind, it seems as though Parker is one bad day away from finding himself in the middle of a civil war — and today isn’t showing much promise.

Because somewhere in the shadows, The Rider is still out there pulling some strings, all with the intent of re-awakening a part of Parker that he had hoped was long gone: The Dark Lord of Hampshire.

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One

‘Get her up, we can’t stay here!’

A javelin of pearlescent power zapped past my ear as I shouted, obliterating the plasterboard wall behind me. On the floor next to me, Sophie Preston, former warlock, was bleeding from a nasty wound in her head. Romsey, another former warlock, was doing his best to hoist her up.

Sorry, dropping you all in medias res here. I’ll catch you up shortly.

A flurry of javelins slammed into the table we were using for cover, the shock reverberating up my arm and rattling at my shoulder. The spell I was holding to keep the upturned table in one piece was robust, but that energy had to go somewhere, and it was already starting to take its toll.

‘I don’t think I can shift her,’ Romsey said. ‘Her fucking brains are all over the floor, if I try and move her—’

‘What’s left might slosh out, yes, I know,’ I shot back. I risked a glance over our makeshift parapet and loosed a wild spell of my own. ‘But if we don’t move her, we’re all fucked. So, use those meaty Scouse muscles and get her to the door.’

Romsey’s expression turned to stone as, with barely a grunt of effort, he lifted Preston up and onto his shoulders, one arm and a leg thrown about his neck like a scarf. He gave me a nod and set off at a sprint for the door. I gave him two steps and then followed, pulling my spell from the overturned table and angling it in the air to deflect any incoming spells. There were a lot of them.

Harried and under pressure, we made it to the door, and I seized the lock with a flake of power. We didn’t dawdle to watch the sparks it spat out – we could hear them on the other side already, throwing spells and fists and furniture in the hope of breaking down the door. They’d succeed, but we had enough of a head start to be able to escape before they did.

Probably not enough to catch our breath, though.

*

An hour later, and Romsey was setting Preston down on a cot that had, at one point, been the dancefloor of a night club. Another ex-warlock, one I didn’t know by name yet, immediately shoved the man out the way and set about working their magic on the young woman. I didn’t stay to watch.

I slipped out the fire escape, out into the concrete quadrangle that had once served as the smoking area of the premises – hundreds of tiny ash marks on the bricks of the walls spoke to that. I picked a corner and slumped to the floor, reminding my lungs that it was their job to breathe, my heart that its job was to beat. The adrenaline was wearing off, so I figured the vital organs would need a bit of bossing around.

‘Hey there, handsome. How’d it go?’

Charlie didn’t waste time. Couldn’t even give me a minute to stew. ‘Shitly.’

‘Looks it, yeah.’ She had been leaning on the frame of the fire escape door, but already she was moving to sit across from me. ‘No progress?’

‘None,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘They’re too angry right now. They’re in that space where any words at all are going to sound like lies. Barely got through the introduction before they turned on us.’

‘But Sophie—’

‘They played her too,’ I interrupted. ‘Apparently treating your informants right doesn’t do as much to create a bond of trust as you’d expect.’

Charlie dropped her chin to her chest. ‘Will she live?’

‘No idea. Ask the warlock patching her up.’

Charlie’s cheerful demeanour faltered for a second. She had improved by leaps and bounds since being liberated from the control of The Rider – she had some colour in her cheeks again and had finally regained enough muscle mass to use a proper belt on her jeans rather than a bungee cord. Every now and then, though, a haunted look flashed across her face. She was becoming better at hiding it, but I never missed it.

In fairness, she hadn’t been given the safest place to heal. From the moment word got out about The Rider taking the Vault out of play, things had gone to shit. The free wizards had mobilised, organised, and started really kicking off – targeting anyone associated with Whitehall. They’d done some damage to the suits, sure enough, but they’d also turned on the warlocks.

No mercy for collaborators. As a motto, it had all the slick gravitas of something whipped up in an advertising agency boardroom, but it was the driving force for most of the free wizards now. We’d been trying to talk things out with them, at least get them pointed at the real enemy but, well, all they could see were the treacherous turncoats who had gone against their own.

We had sown a lot of distrust over the years, and now it was time for the reaping.

See, told you I’d get you all caught up.

‘You’ve got a visitor, by the way,’ Charlie said without looking up. ‘Again.’

I sighed. ‘She won’t take no for an answer, will she?’

‘Stubbornness has worked well for her so far, no reason to change her approach now I guess.’

‘I’ll give her one.’

I stood up slowly. There was a dull ache in my shoulder, the aftermath of holding that shield against the attack. As I went to walk past Charlie, the pain flared. She had grabbed my hand to stop me.

‘Jim,’ she said, her voice quiet and delicate. ‘You’re doing good. Remember that.’

I looked down at her and nodded, unable to come up with any other way to respond that didn’t sound trite or insincere. As if sensing what I was feeling, she let go of my hand and looked away, and I went back inside.

Kaitlyn van Ives was waiting for me in the manager’s office behind the DJ booth. She had really taken to the whole revolutionary uprising thing – which, I suppose, is just a small pivot from freedom fighter when you think about it. Her fire-red hair had been tied back so as to accommodate an honest-to-God beret, a crimson band tied around her upper arm, and she had started swapping out her shabby-chic combat trousers for something a little more photogenic. She was wringing every ounce of political legitimacy out of the Zapatistan aesthetic.

She crossed her arms as she watched me enter. ‘Parker.’

‘I don’t want to hear it, not now.’

‘I told you it wasn’t going to work.’

My eye twitched. ‘I don’t need you here gloating about how your untethered army of angry proles have pushed me and mine back to hiding like rats, Kaitlyn. I’ve got a woman bleeding out down there whose only crime was trying to talk to these people.’

‘Not her only crime,’ Kaitlyn said, her tone measured. ‘Not to them.’

‘It wasn’t like Whitehall gave us much of a choice. If they had been in our place—’

‘But they weren’t, so you can’t go thinking that way. It’s going to take time before you can bring them to the table, you’re pushing them too hard.’

‘I don’t need a lesson on politics from the face of the revolution.’

She bristled at my words. ‘Now, that’s not fair.’

‘Neither is your people trying to hound us to the ends of the bloody earth. And yet, here we are.’

‘They’re not my people,’ she said. ‘You can’t steer a revolution, it does that itself. You just hold on tight and wait for it to calm just enough to tug the reins a little.’

I laughed. ‘I never thought you’d be giving a politician’s answer.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Why are you here, Kaitlyn?’

She went quiet, her jaw trembling a little. It jabbed me right in the heart, which made me think that it had been designed to do so. Van Ives had been to see me every day for a week now, trying to talk me into something, but I had shut her down each time before she could even explain what it was. This was the first time she had tried the waterworks strategy, and it was a little disappointing to find I was still that easy to manipulate.

‘We’re splintering,’ she said. ‘At first, everyone was happy to be one big force for change, but it was only a matter of time before factions started forming. I can work with most of them, but there’s one in particular—’

‘Not interested,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘I’m not going to go from hated warlock to hated union buster.’

‘They’re supremacists,’ she continued, undaunted. ‘The worst ideologies of the dark times, all mixing together into one horrible mass of hate. They are gaining more support every day, pushing me out. If they keep gaining traction, I won’t be able to tug the reins anymore.’

‘Fat lot of good you’ve done for us so far.’

Her eyes blazed. ‘I’ve done everything I can to keep this contained! It’s my influence alone that has kept this discontent to the magical community. It is a daily struggle to talk them out of going for the families of warlocks to draw them into the light. Without me blunting their edges, you’re looking at an all-out civil war.’

I took one long breath. The free wizards had us outnumbered ten to one, but the reason they had been able to remain free for the most part was because they weren’t as magically adept as the people who had been dragged in to make warlocks. They were minor talents, low priority. We had the muscle to beat them in open conflict, but they had the numbers. Any victory we managed to eke out would be Pyrrhic at best – especially as we didn’t have the will to fight them.

‘Why do you need me?’

‘They know all my agents,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘I move against them, they’ll use that as an excuse to force me out. That happens, there’s no-one else to be the voice of reason.’

‘And I’m the most famous warlock in the country, apparently. They’d lynch me as soon as look at me.’

‘Not if you play your part right.’

She had kept her eyes right on the cusp of bubbling over, of tears streaming down her face, for the entirety of the conversation now. It was such a transparent gambit, so overly rehearsed and artificial, that it was almost insulting. This wasn’t just manipulating me to accept her request here, it was knowing that I wouldn’t be able to turn her down and was laying the groundwork for how I would justify it to myself.

Shit, I bet she even planned how many visits it would take me to break.

Worst of all, she was right – things were currently very bad indeed, but it didn’t take a substantial amount of imagination to see how much worse things would be with a true zealot at the helm of the good ship Uprising.

I pushed my thumbs into my eyes a little and groaned loudly. ‘Tell me everything I need to know.’

It took her a long time to get me filled in, and the more she talked the more impressed – and intimidated – I was about the sheer scale of her network.

I had never been under any illusions about how dangerous Kaitlyn van Ives could be. Working for Whitehall, her position at the top of the Most Wanted list had come parcelled with entire hard drives full of documents about her activities. And yet, even after having met her, it had been hard to see her as anything but an underdog eking out her living in the spaces between the gears of government.

Turns out, what she had been doing was constructing an entire bloody shadow state.

The dossiers she had put together for each of the key members of the supremacist faction were scarily detailed, rivalling anything I had ever received from government agencies. In a different life, she would have been a deadly spymaster.

After a few hours, I put down another stuffed file folder and sighed. ‘These are some bad dudes.’

‘That’s putting it lightly,’ she said. ‘Honestly, that they’ve shown any restraint at all amazes me.’

‘From what you’ve shown me, looks like their leader has been keeping them in line.’

Kaitlyn shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Efraim Kingsley is old-school, knows a lot about how to organise properly, but he doesn’t have the charisma to command.’

‘He’s not the leader,’ I said. ‘A lieutenant, maybe. But we both know who’s pulling the strings.’

‘Ah,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘I did wonder if you’d make that connection.’

‘Of course, I’d make the connection! He flat out told me this was the sort of shit he had planned!’

For a moment, there had been the tiniest hint of enjoyment on Kaitlyn’s face. She got pleasure out of testing me, seeing what I could work out on my own and where I needed some gaps filled in. My outburst had wiped that away, though. I realised that she hadn’t been prepared for me to be quite so business-like about things, and a dark knot squirmed in my belly as a result.

It wasn’t her fault that The Rider was such a sore spot for me. I do have a problem when it comes to holding grudges, and someone manipulating me into taking the greatest deterrent to magical uprising off the board was always going to cut very deep. But it wasn’t just that – he had shown me things, what he claimed to be the future, and how he wanted me at his side to help deal with what was coming.

Kaitlyn didn’t know – couldn’t know – that these supremacists were most likely the tip of a spear that The Rider had been very keen to place in my hand.

‘If it is him,’ she said gently. ‘Then surely you see why we have to get in there and shut this shit down?’

I nodded. ‘He’s done enough damage.’

‘Come see me tomorrow,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘I’ll have my guys tidy you up so you can make your grand entrance.’

‘How did you know I’d want to make a grand entrance?’

That spark of joy returned to her face for an instant. ‘Because I’ve met you.’

She rose to leave, and I declined to do the gentlemanly thing and stand to see her off. I don’t think she minded. Besides, I wasn’t done yet.

Kaitlyn left, closing the door behind her, and I waited until her footsteps had finished fading away, lost among the cluttered soundscape of our little hideaway. When I was sure she was gone, I let my eyes wander to the corner of the room. Shadows had been gathering there slowly over the last hour, cottony wisps of darkness congealing like cobwebs. It was subtle, slow, and not something anyone would think to notice if they hadn’t seen it before.

But I had. The damned thing had been haunting me for weeks.

As if reacting to my gaze, a face formed quickly in the darkness, followed by a body, and stepped out into the light. The sickly light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling caught her hair instantly, a tight braid of auburn flecked with highlights of red. No matter where we were, the light had always found a way of catching her hair like that.

‘I don’t think she gives Efraim enough credit,’ she said. ‘Given enough media coaching I think I could make something pretty special out of him.’

‘Piss off,’ I spat back, trying to resist the urge to look her in the face.

‘Come on, Jim, don’t be like that.’

‘I’ll be however I want,’ I said. ‘Especially when you wear that face to fucking mock me. I’ve given you your answer, so piss off.’

My resistance wavered and my eyes crept from her hair to her face. The gentle chin, the smile like a crooked stream in a renaissance painting, the nose just a little too pointy for her own good. And then the eyes, red-ringed irises on black, burning out the core of all my good memories of her.

The Rider had been wearing Robin’s face every time he had paid me a visit since the incident at the vault, and it never stopped hurting.

‘I should let Efraim know you are coming to relieve him’ The Rider said. ‘Because that is what will happen if you try your hand at this cloak and dagger business. We both know it. We’ve seen it. The only way you can stop all of this is to take charge, just as I’ve wanted for you from the beginning.’

I pulled my gaze away from The Rider’s eyes. ‘Ever the devil on my shoulder, aren’t you? Keep wasting your time, see how that goes for you.’

The Rider opened their mouth to respond – Robin’s teeth were an off-white, one canine adorably wonky – but I had no patience left. I pulled a scrap of paper from my pocket, held it tight in my fist, and blew a mote of power into it. When I unfurled my fingers, a starburst of pure white light flashed as the paper burned away in an instant, scouring the shadows from every corner. The Rider was gone, and I was alone.

My heart thumped in my chest for a moment or two, and my palm tingled from the results of the spell. I let myself feel both those sensations, allowed the rest of the world to drain away while I regained my centre.

So, yeah, things had been a bit weird and stressful and, if I’m honest, thoroughly shit since the vault fell. And it’s not like they were going to get much better any time soon. Still, makes for good reading for you, I suppose. How’s that for a silver lining?